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Global Warming Conference in New York was a great reassurance — "We are not alone"
Viv Forbes
Not only do we have large and growing numbers on our side, but they include world ranking figures whose credibility cannot be sensibly challenged. The ant's nest is now stirred, and lots of specialists are deciding to produce papers, reports and blogs highlighting yet another area where the proposition that carbon dioxide controls world temperature is ludicrous. No credible answers are coming from the other side.
We are clearly winning the scientific debate, but the alarmists have to date won overwhelmingly in the media and in politics. Many in these areas have a closed mind, and are determined to pursue their goal of world control of energy no matter what the science reveals. The general population is confused and bemused. They do not understand the huge cost and disruption that must flow from these foolish proposals. Moreover, many think "we are a wasteful society, and are degrading our environment, so even if the science is faulty, curbing consumption will have beneficial effects. Besides I do not trust those big energy and coal companies."
Most power and resource companies are playing a craven and wholly unprincipled game. They cannot all be so stupid that they do not see the flaws in the arguments or the huge risks in the proposed policies. But they remain silent, seeking all the while to somehow profit from a situation where, in the end, there can be no winners except those who want to erase man and all his works from the face of the earth.
These foolish policies will soon produce many morbid results. Already world food prices are soaring, triggered by ethanol demand in the US grains market. Palm oil, tallow and sugar prices are also rising. Prices for all proteins will follow. And foolish restrictions and delays to the construction of coal power plants has already brought blackouts and power interruptions in South Africa and California. Should the current cold spell continue, there will be an even bigger crisis in food and electricity supply.
Australia is in special danger from ludicrous proposals from Professor Garnaut that we should aim at a 90 per cent cut in carbon emissions, followed by demands by the Deep Greens for 100 per cent cuts. This is a big decentralised country that relies heavily on mining, agriculture, cheap power, low transport costs and a buoyant tourism industry. Imagine any or all of these industries managing to eliminate carbon emissions. No feasible options for doing it exist - they are either banned or not proven technically - it could only be achieved by cutting living standards or cutting population.
We need also to watch what our representatives to the IPCC are saying. The UN is desperate for a world agreement on cutting carbon emissions. To get India, China, Africa and others America into this net they will have to promise a target of "equal emissions per person". Are you prepared to condemn your children to paying huge carbon taxes to India and China until our living standards match theirs?
But our arguments do not rely solely on the faulty science or the certain disruptions to our backbone industries. Carbon dioxide is the key food resource - at 200 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, plant growth almost stops. Plant growth (and food production) has surged as industry and the warming oceans supplied more CO2 to the atmosphere taking CO2 levels to about 380 ppm. At levels of 1000 ppm, there would be no harm to animals but a huge improvement in plant health.
The cuts being proposed could easily result in CO2 levels falling so low that plant growth is severely stifled. If we want to continue to have cheap abundant food, we must oppose silly policies to cut emissions or even bury carbon resources deep in the earth as some people are proposing. For most people on earth, life has always been a struggle for protein. Cutting CO2 in the atmosphere must also cut our protein supplies.
Oblivious to all this, world temperatures refuse to rise — falls in the year to Feb 2008 were the steepest ever recorded and have erased in one year almost all the warming of the previous 100 years. There is record snow cover in many places, first snow ever recorded in other places, and Arctic Ice is back. This does not prove the 300 year modern warming trend is ended, but it does prove that there are bigger things than carbon dioxide controlling world temperature. If we combine falling temperature with falling CO2 levels, we will indeed see a food crisis.
The New York conference was a marvellous opportunity to meet the great names on our side in the debate, and to establish contacts which will help us all in what will be a hard fought global battle. It was also the opportunity to launch the International Climate Science Coalition, supported by the Carbon Sense Coalition, and many others. I have agreed to be a policy director of this new world body.
We need your help in the political battle. Nothing is achieved if statements such as this below just get trashed in the usual media offices and you file them with a warm inner glow that "well, we are doing something". We need your help to spread these bits of ammunition to places they have never been before — media, politicians, scientists, engineers, the general population. Politics is a numbers game, and without media support we can only win "one by one". Each of us has family, friends, associates or cold contacts we can approach.
We can try to supply the ammunition, but we cannot do all the shooting.
Viv Forbes, BScApp, FAusIMM, FSIA, is Chairman of The Carbon Sense Coalition
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 10 March 2008
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